I really, really like rules. I always have. Ever since I was 14 years old and worked in a news agency. My boss thought I was the employee of the century because the EFTPOS limit was $10 and if someone spent even 5c less than that it was NO EFTPOS FOR YOU! The limit wasn’t $9.95, so sorry desperate mother with three screaming children. I’d love to help you out but I can’t risk my perfect employment record for you. So yes, you are going to have to drag your exhausted posse over the road to the ATM. Why? Because I don’t make the rules. I AM the rules. Rules soothe me. So do boundaries.
This is why I’m extremely scared of the acronym ASAP. I get sent at least twenty emails per day from clients, friends, editors, directors and journalists asking me to do things ASAP. That simple little acronym has a vice-like strong hold that makes me drop everything I’m doing to attend to the ASAP situation. Which is really silly because ASAP is not that big a deal, but to me it has this foreboding and to be quite frank, inflated sense of urgency.
If something is really, truly urgent people don’t ask someone to do it ASAP. They say they need it by 4 o’clock, it has to be on their desk in an hour or they’re taking it to the printers tomorrow. What ASAP usually means is ‘I want you to think this is really important but I’m not senior enough/forgot to tell you about this last week/not paying you enough/not paying you at all/don’t have any authority over you/am asking you for a giant favour so I’m using the magic word ASAP to make this seem really pressing in a non-threatening way‘. This is fine for most of the population who don’t take casual acronyms as seriously and literally as I do. But me? I take issue with ASAP because I believe that the timely completion of a task is one of the most satisfying acts a human being can perform along with peeing after holding it for ages or finally dislodging a seed from your teeth after four days of stabbing at it with a toothpick.
I’m completely neurotic about meeting deadlines and stand so firmly behind my own life motto that I’ve made a poster out of it.
I’m not so pious as to pretend that I have never used the term ASAP but I pretty much only use it if I am being a bitch or trying to buy myself some time. If someone has sent me four emails asking for something ‘ASAP’ and has given no time frame or actual deadline and is generally being a bit of a dick, I’ll reply with ‘Sure. You’ll get it ASAP.‘ and then secretly in my head I’m all ‘Oh, you’ll get it ASAP. As. Soon. As. Possible. Right after this repeat of The Brady Bunch. That’ll learn you not to give me a direct deadline. ‘
For the record I also hate ‘RIP’. It’s so gravestone-y.
Do you hate any acronyms?